Author Archives: Melea Lineberry

Audio Assignments

For my first audio assignment, I created a bit of audio using Chrome Music Labs. My original goal was to draw my imaginary friend from childhood, Carl the Octopus. After I finished his outline, I realized he was looking more like a bug, so I went with it and added antennas. Even though I was creating the audio based on coloring in the blocks, I still think it sounded ok. You can view/listen to my creation here.

The second audio assignment asked me to mix together at least 4 different scary audios to make one, ultimate spooky audio. I decided to use AI with this assignment by picking sounds that were very robotic and reminiscent of a robot takeover. I figured that this is what a lot of older people hear when someone on the news is talking about how AI will ruin everything.

Finally, I decided to implement my character in an assignment that asked me to record myself saying an inspirational quote and mix background music or instrumentals that seemed appropriate or inspiring. I decided to use text to speech software that said my character’s quote. I then mixed it with the sound of fire crackling, as that sound seemed as intense at the quote.

Radio Show Ideas

It might be interesting to have this radio show focus more on the role of AI in different professional spaces and determine its advantages and disadvantages. We could almost do case studies of how its been implemented and if it has hurt or improved the company culture in different industries. In this analysis, it would also be interesting to see if some industries are hurt more than others and why this could be.

As for my character, Isaiah Beacon, I think he would do everything in his power to bring the attention of the radio show back to himself. I also think that anytime another character brings up a negative point about AI in the workplace, he would try to belittle and suppress their comments as much as possible. Isaiah also already has his own media empire, so it would be kind of funny to frame it as him having different guests on his show. I think all of the case study examples that Isaiah would bring up would be overwhelmingly positive to the point of obvious delusion. For example, he’d probably perform some mental gymnastics to vilify unions or individuals protesting their jobs being taken away by AI.

Week 3 Summary

Overall, this week went much better than last weeks! I was definitely a lot less overwhelmed, and I was very interested in the graphic design theme for this week. As I often have to create graphics for my job, it was helpful to read all of those articles and videos and to gain needed perspective. You can read more of my thoughts on that assignment here.

As for Daily Creates, I think I got some very easy ones this week. It was also a lot easier because I actually did them daily, as intended, this time around. You can find my daily creates on my X account.

The Photoblitz turned out to be a surprisingly fun assignment, and it forced me out of my comfort zone a little bit. I was not expecting to be able to take/create the photos in 20 minutes, but I only needed 10. You can read more about the experience here.

The AI art assignment was also very fun, especially when I turned the evaluation between the 2 AI image generators into more of a competition to see which had the best output. I honestly think both outputs were worse the second time, showing that AI art generators still have a long way to go. For the 2 assignments from the bank, I chose to do an evil business card of my character and overlay a poem about a flower on a flower.

Here’s to having an even easier week next week!

Design Reflections

Prior to watching the videos and reading the articles, I feel like my understanding of design was more surface level. As I am studying and working in marketing, I have spent a decent amount of time designing graphics for my courses or for my email newsletter at work. I kind of viewed the task in terms of tasks versus a design as a whole. For example, for a sales promotion graphic, I was only concerned with:

  • Dates of the sale
  • Sale price
  • Picture of item on sale
  • Making it look good

The videos and articles forced me to look how each of the elements of a design play off of each other, especially the Vanity Fair video on the use of blank space. I was particularly interested in the cultural relationship between movie posters and book covers, and how books covers have historically influenced trends in movie posters.

In terms of books covers, I had never thought about how a book cover tells a story of a story. In my personal experience, I sometimes have a creative block when trying to figure out the best way to visually relay a piece of information. I cannot even imagine how intimidating this task is to create a book cover.

AI Art

I enjoyed what Digital Detox had to say about art and AI. Largely, I agree with a lot of their comments and their outlook on AI. I do think we have an obligation to protect human artists first and foremost instead of allowing everyone to turn to AI for their art needs. On the other hand, I do think AI is something we need to learn to live with and manage because it’s not going away anytime soon. I liked the comparison of our current situation to the invention of the camera and how some artists in the 19th century were also very skeptical of its status as art.

For my entry, I wanted to go with a very simple prompt of asking the AI to create the four changing seasons. I used Bing and Stable Diffusion. After this very simple prompt, I got these outputs:

Stable Diffusion

From this round, I think that Bing is the winner because Stable Diffusion is just showing the same season four times. For my improved prompt, I asked both of the AI to add people and I asked Stable Diffusion to make sure to show white for winter, green for summer, orange for fall, and flowers in the spring.

Stable Diffusion

I believe Bing has won again because it was able to show me the different seasons with people. Stable Diffusion still wasn’t able to show the differences in the seasons too well and it didn’t add people.

From the assignment bank, I decided to do the evil business card and warped text assignments. For the evil business card, I did one for my character because he is somewhat self obsessed and steals money from donors so I think he falls under the bad guy trope.

For the warped text assignment, I was supposed to warp the text of a poem around an object. Unfortunately, my editing software doesn’t give me the option to warp text, so I did a text overlay as it’s similar. I wanted to pick a poem with a flower theme to match the picture. The poem is called “The Flower Poem” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Photoblitz

For this assignment, I was lucky to get some fun and easy photo tasks. The tasks were:

  • Let’s play with movement. Get a shot of something in motion.
  • Square is hip! Lose the rectangle. A photo with square (1:1) aspect ratio.
  • Today’s theme is “3”. Make a photograph that features the number itself or otherwise represents 3 items.
  • Take a picture of construction.
  • Make a creative photo of paired opposites.
  • Make a photo dominated by your favourite colour and share it!
  • Take an extreme close-up of an easily recognizable, common object.

click for another list.

I did not need the whole 20 minutes! The only task I wasn’t able to complete was the taking a picture of construction because, for the first time in my 4 years at UMW, there wasn’t any construction to take a picture of. The timestamp pictures are below.

Time 1
Time 2

My first task was a picture of an item in movement, so I took a video of a pen being thrown and screenshotted it when it was mid-air.

I then let this very nice plant model for the 1:1 photo task.

I then took a picture of three items; my keys, my cup, and some hand sanitizer.

In Canva, I created a design with paired opposites. I decided to play off the “pair” idea and made a pair of converse, one white and one black.

I again used Canva to create a design with my favorite color and I used some of my favorite items. I do have a yellow pair of shoes, backpack, phone, etc.

Finally, I let an orange chair in the library model for my close up.

Reflection

When I first got my list, I definitely groaned a bit. I thought I’d be embarrassed taking these pictures in a public area and I didn’t think I’d be able to take them all in the time frame. Luckily, no one was really around so I was fine there and I was surprised by how quickly I was able to finish this assignment. It also forced me to creatively come up with a satisfactory picture in a short period of time and get out of my comfort zone.

Week 2 Summary

This week definitely had a bit of a learning curve. I didn’t go into this week expecting to be spending more time on assignments than I did last week. Last week, I was able to finish all of the assignments in a short period of time which lead to me not giving myself enough time this week. Oh well, we live and we learn for next week. The daily creates threw me off a bit as I wasn’t paying attention to the daily aspect of the course, but I’ll make to block off enough time next week. Here is the link to my Twitter where I posted each one.

My favorite assignment for the week was definitely the assignment bank one. I had a lot of fun with all of the variety and coming up with different ways to integrate AI. I am especially proud of my Vogue Magazine cover where I used an AI generated image of myself for the cover.

I also found the Techno-Optimist Manifesto assignment to be fairly interesting. While I cannot say that I am convinced by the claims in the manifesto it was cool to read about the development of AI in a way that made it seem virtuous. While my film does portray AI negatively, I think that there are a lot more parallels between the manifesto and the film than what’s on the surface so I enjoyed drawing out those comparisons.

Taking inspiration from the manifesto, I created my course character to be an evangelist and prophet for AI. Isaiah Beacon preaches on the ultimate good of AI development and is inspired by the 1970s, televangelist archetype.

I’ll be honest, when rewriting my film review, Dr. Oblivion wasn’t very helpful. While I’m impressed by his knowledge and the project as a whole, his feedback didn’t give me anything to go off of or ways to improve it. I then asked him what he thought the main themes of AI in the film were and I included one of his top themes.

Techno-Optimist Manifesto

It was very interesting to read a perspective on technology that framed it as an ultimate good versus looking at it skeptically like a lot of films that use AI. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto also describes the development of technology as a virtue, and anyone who tries to hinder its growth will cause society to die alongside it. Personally, I tend to view technological developments like AI as neither a neutral, and this it the morality of its uses are situational, which doesn’t seem to be the opinion of the manifesto writers. While “2001: A Space Odyssey” tends to portray AI in a more negative light, I think that the film and the manifesto have more in common than would seem on the surface. Especially in the section “Becoming Technological Superman” the manifesto authors stress the importance of AI to human development in a similar way to the film. The film stresses the need of man to conquer all and to overcome nature in order to progress the development of humanity. The alien super race only reveals itself to humanity whenever it has taken the next step in the process of conquering nature. In the same way, the manifesto preaches these same ideals but views AI as a means to the end. I think that this is the main difference between the film in the manifesto, for the film humanity is meant to conquer all, even technology, while the manifesto that that the ultimate form of conquering is the development and use of AI.

Some feedback given by Dr. Oblivion is to consider that anxiety inducing element that the film gives off and that this may be one of the main purposes of the film. While I agree with this, I also think that the audience of the film needs to be considered. When the film first came out, this anxiety was a Sci-Fi idea, and while it was scary it was definitely still seen as fiction. For a modern viewer, the anxiety is almost undercut by the tangibility of AI as it has already leaked into daily use for many individuals. While I still feel this tension between man and AI, I think it is lessened as I don’t necessarily view it as a monster like the original viewers may have.

Course Character

My character’s name is Isaiah Beacon, and he is an evangelist for AI. He was born in 1955 in the Midwest and has been running a television studio since the 1970s that broadcasts his sermons to his thousands of loyal listeners. He’s collected millions of dollars to donate to AI developers and to line his own pockets. His loyal wife is at his side during every broadcast. Isaiah not only believes that AI should be encouraged and developed, he worships it and prophesizes about its future. He warns his followers that anyone who tries to hinder the development of AI will be abandoned by it when it finally takes over.

Film Review Rewrite

For my initial film review, I wrote about “2001: Space Odyssey” and today I asked Dr. Oblivion to give me some feedback and some more ideas about the presence of AI themes in the film that I may have missed. When I first gave him my review for feedback, he wasn’t very specific but warned me that the lens that I was writing AI through may be overly pessimistic. As a result I asked for his opinions on the AI themes in the film and that’s when I took note of the themes I missed, perhaps as a result of my optimistic view. One of the themes that he recommended I write about is the potential for AI to surpass human intelligence. I would say that this is a crucial part of the film and is the reason why HAL ultimately believed that he knew what was best for the mission and was partially successful at eliminating the crew. This theme taps into a real human fear that if AI surpasses us in knowledge, AI may view us as obsolete and even as obstacles. Perhaps HAL 9000 was so advanced that he knew that a successful completion of the mission would ultimately make HAL obsolete, and this is why he sabotaged it. If humans advanced to the next stage in human evolution, then the knowledge from AI would no longer be necessary. With the possibility of AI becoming so advanced, what’s to say that it won’t sabotage us in the future and prevent us from “needing” it.